


Icarus Pulled Down the Sun

by RemilyBows (Unfair_Verona)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Childhood Memories, Creepy, Daddy Kink, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dissociation, Dry Humping, Ejaculate, Extremely Underage, F/M, Fingerfucking, Fondling, Forced Orgasm, Grooming, Hearing Voices, Loss of Virginity, Mental Instability, Miscarriage, Molestation, Mutual Masturbation, Obsession, Oral Sex, Pedophilia, Pseudo-Incest, Psychological Drama, Psychological Trauma, Puberty, Rape, Stockholm Syndrome, Unreliable Narrator, Vaginal Fingering, Vibrators, Watersports
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2019-10-20 15:26:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17624948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unfair_Verona/pseuds/RemilyBows
Summary: Because she was meant for him. And he promised they would be together forever.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is something that I have been working on; it is probably the darkest thing I've ever written but I felt that the story wanted to be told. Obviously, it contains very triggering themes, so please mind the tags.

It ended in the woods. The cold air burned her lungs as she ran, a stray tree branch occasionally struck her across the face like a slap. Her feet tangled in roots. She’d already tripped and fallen twice, her palms and clothes were caked with dirt, and bits of dry leaves clung to her hair. He was calling for her. Getting closer. Once, she had loved that voice, so low and warm. It had made her feel safe.

Everything had gone wrong.

He screamed her name again, and it echoed hellishly through the forest. Pleading. A wounded animal. _Her fault_.

Guilt slowed her, that hurt cry ripping into her, weighing her down. Just enough.

His arms were around her, tackling her to the ground, heavy weight pressing down, his hands grabbing her wrists. Hide and seek. I found you. She should not have run.

Above her, his eyes were wild. Too blue, framed by that long hair. She had always loved the way it felt sliding through her fingers. Her fault. She had made him like this, a feral creature that she didn’t recognize. Dragging her all over the country, growing more paranoid and possessive by the day.

She was fourteen, now. Fourteen and already one miscarriage. The pain and the blood, almost ripping her in half. Doubled over on a motel bathroom floor. Crying. _Daddy, please. Help me_. Reaching out with crimson stained fingers. 

Part of her would always be six years old, curling against his warm chest, right next to his heart. The safest place in the world. 

The ground was cold, damp. Up above her, the gray-white sky loomed with wintry indifference. His eyes were bloodshot. Tears there, also. Her fault. She should not have loved him so, should not have made promises that she could not keep. A child’s promises. She should not have allowed him to love her the way he did, should not have liked it so much.

She was fourteen, now. She would never be fifteen.

“Daddy, _please_ ,” she begged uselessly. She already knew that she would never leave the woods. It was all drawing to a swift close. And perhaps it could never have been any other way.

The weight of him on top of her. Pushing her legs apart. Cold air on skin. He was always so strong. Outside, and then inside of her, moving in that possessive way, until she was absorbed by him and ceased to exist. This was the last time she would feel him. _You and me will be together forever_. She thought of summer, of warm things. The memory of her fingers in his hair, on his cheek. She let herself enjoy it.

 

**Eight Years Earlier**

 

It began at the house on 7th Avenue, when Connie Valence brought Jon North home one day. Connie was two years older than him, but looked even older—she was not aging well, years of partying and drinking had seen to that. She had long dark hair and pretty but severe features. She was thin, almost bony. A cigarette perpetually dangled from her mouth, which was coated in a layer of too-dark matte lipstick. Jon had arrived in Illinois from California a few weeks before and had hooked up with Connie through a mutual acquaintance. They’d started sleeping together almost immediately. Now he supposed they had something like a relationship, and he had a place to stay, at least for the moment. He’d been living like a drifter for many years, since he had left Hampstead Farm, the commune in Oregon where he’d spent his early life.

Jon was thirty-one years old, then, with brown hair that fell to his shoulders when it was loose. Women always seemed to like his hair, as well as his large and expressive blue eyes. He was an artist by trade, never formally taught but he had cultivated the skill over the years. Growing up raised by hippies and artisans of various types had seen to that. Now he sold paintings whenever he could, and did odd jobs in between. Not that he needed to, he was actually quite wealthy—his grandfather had left him a significant inheritance that he claimed once he turned twenty-one, and thankfully he hadn’t squandered it. He honestly didn’t know what to do with it all, money had never mattered much where he came from. So it sat in the bank collecting interest, and Jon continued to live like a bohemian, never mentioning his fortune to anyone.

He didn’t think he’d ever want a house of his own. They were too permanent. Jon was always at war with himself, one part hated being tied down and yet some other part desperately wanted stability. And yet, strange yearning had been building inside of him for months, until he could feel it all the time, gnawing like an ulcer. It was the feeling that something was calling to him. And when Connie led him up the walkway to her home, he could feel it all the more strongly, a near-supernatural force. 

There was nothing overtly special about the house, it had dark shutters and a small yard in front. A tired, sad aura clung to the siding and the screen door. As they walked inside, shabby carpet greeted him, as well as the smell of stale cigarette smoke half-hidden beneath cloying air freshener. But it was better than nothing. As Connie led him into the kitchen, he saw a tiny figure seated at the small kitchen table. She had a head full of wavy dark hair and a heart-shaped face with bright hazel eyes. She smiled at him with full, sweet plump lips. His heart stopped for a moment, arrested by the tiny beauty. He forgot how to breathe. She was wearing a white shirt and dark blue overalls and there was a delicate charm bracelet on her slim wrist.

“My daughter, Paloma,” Connie said, gesturing to the child as she went over to the fridge. “Pal, say hi to Jon,” she instructed, pulling out two   
bottles of beer. 

The creature blinked up at him, smiling wider. “Hi, Jon.”

Connie hadn’t told him that she had a kid. The little girl’s smile reached inside of his chest and yanked on his heart. The ulcer disappeared.

He remembered how to breathe, to speak. “Hello, Paloma,” he said, tasting her name on his tongue.

She was six, he learned. In kindergarten. She loved dragons and insects, especially butterflies. She could almost count to one hundred. Her father was not around anymore. 

He was transfixed by her. A weird halo existed around the girl, and energy that called to him and made his skin tingle. She’s mine, was all he could think. He didn’t know how, only that she was. 

From that first head-spinning minute, Jon was determined to be part of Paloma’s life, even if that meant becoming more involved with Connie, who was beginning to nauseate him. She mostly ignored her daughter, though she wasn’t malicious, just disinterested. But Jon was very interested in the lovely little girl, a warm feeling flooding his chest every time she looked at him. She got used to his presence very quickly, it seemed that she was drawn to him as well, which delighted Jon. 

One night after dinner, Connie went to lie down and he sat with Paloma on the couch, watching a movie about princesses. She curled up next to him and he tucked her against his chest, nuzzling into her hair and the warmth of her soft little body. It was heaven. She fit so perfectly in his arms, with her head right next to his heart. 

That was when he realized he was falling in love.

 

Connie started going out more without him. Her drinking was escalating and there were other things involved, pills mostly. He didn’t even try to stop her. It worked out well—Connie had a live-in babysitter, and Jon could spend time alone with Paloma. 

He became quite domestic after that, and fell into the role more easily than he ever thought he could. A new sense of gravity had found its way to him, in the shape of a perfect little girl. He did the laundry and cleaned and cooked kid-friendly things for Paloma, like chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese. She also had a surprisingly sophisticated palate as well, he discovered: she liked vegetables and salad and even steak. One night he made her chocolate chip cookies. A smudge of chocolate coated his finger and he wordlessly offered it to her. Her tongue darted out, then she closed her warm, wet mouth around him and sucked, giggling. Heat flared low, Jon felt his dick give a throb, hardening in his pants. Rationally, he knew that she was a child, that it should be so wrong to feel like this, to react in such a way. But something told him that she was more than that, and it shouldn’t be a sin to love her the way he was starting to.

Paloma was becoming more affectionate with him and he let her, encouraging physical contact. He hugged her whenever he could, played with her hair, pulled her onto his lap, danced with her and spun her around. She squealed and smiled, so open, her face perfect and full of life. She was like the sun, he decided, and she was meant for him. 

“Bathtime, princess,” he said after dinner one night, scooping her up and carrying her into the bathroom. He filled up the tub and got all her bath toys. She was surprisingly un-shy as he slowly undressed her, trying to ignore the way his mouth went dry at the sight of her exposed skin, soft and smooth and pink. Perfect. She was old enough to wash herself, but she let him suds her hair and her body. First he only stroked the wash cloth over her skin but it soon fell into the water, abandoned in favor of his hands. Jon marveled at how small and delicate she was, how big his hands looked against her. He kept it chaste, forcing himself to stay away from the tiny nipples on her chest and the smooth place between her legs that he tried desperately not to look at. But she was so beautiful, it was difficult. 

As he wrapped his sweet girl in a towel, wet and pink, he fantasized about taking a bath with her. She was comfortable in her own nakedness around him, he wanted her to be comfortable with his naked body, too. 

He began by wearing shirts less, picking her up and holding her against his naked chest, always right by his heart, wanting her to feel the way it raced every time she was close. 

She stroked her tiny fingers over his shoulders and pecs, she seemed fascinated by his lean muscles. She also liked his long hair, was always playing with it and running it through her fingers, tugging lightly, both soothing and arousing him. 

 

~

 

She had a nightmare and crawled into bed between he and Connie, who was home for once. They’d fucked joylessly and then she had passed out. He was starting to detest her more and more, with her lipstick and sharp elbows. She tasted like gin and ashtray. He’d gotten hard by thinking of Paloma’s smooth bare skin. And then there she was, like a dream, sleepily nestling herself in between them. He cuddled her, smoothing her hair, until she fell back asleep. Connie watched him in the dim light, the smoke from her cigarette curling in the air. He hated when she smoked in front of his baby. Her dark eyes drifted down to her sleeping daughter and then back up at him. She reached down and pulled up Paloma’s nightgown, just a little, exposing her legs and her mermaid underwear. 

“Is that something you want?” she asked him. Her voice was bland, emotionless. She might have been asking about the weather. 

“W-what?” he managed. Cold sweat crawled over his skin and he felt sick.

Connie shrugged. “You spend a lot of time with her. I just wondered. You can touch her if you want, she won’t mind.”

His blood ran icy. He instantly hated Connie as he thought over the implications. Had she brought Paloma into bed with her and another man before? Had she allowed other men to touch his baby girl? The thought strangled him, another pair of hands, selfishly roaming her skin…

“I’m going to put her back in her room,” he said tightly, gathering Paloma up and carrying her away from her mother.

Her bedroom was too small, he observed as he set her back in her bed. Like the rest of the house it was drab and dark. He would do something about that, he decided. Money was no object, after all. New paint, new furniture, something cheery and bright. His mind churned. He just needed to get Connie out of the picture—but that shouldn’t be too hard, he would simply have to wait. She was digging herself deeper into substance abuse, all he would have to do was sit back and allow her to destroy herself. It was the best thing for all of them. Before he covered Paloma with the blanket, Jon looked down once more to the place where her nightgown had ridden up, the patch between her legs hidden in shadow. _Is that something you want?_

He shuddered and his fingers trembled, hesitating in the air. _Touch her_. No, not yet. He drew in a breath and dragged a hand through his hair, tucking her in.

The next afternoon, Connie returned in an uncharacteristically lively mood. She was getting dressed to go back out again, and Jon suspected that her high spirits were chemically induced. He didn’t care. The sooner she left again, the better. He and Paloma were having a nice afternoon; after she’d gotten home from kindergarten they’d had lunch and read from a book. Then she went to her room to play while he worked on his sketches. Connie motioned to him and he grudgingly went over to her. She was standing outside the half-closed door to Paloma’s room, peering in. There was a weird smirk on her face.

“Look,” she said, nodding her head. Jon peered in through the small opening and could see his girl sitting on the floor. She was moving. It took him a moment to register what she was doing: her shirt was hiked up around her waist and she was straddling one of her larger stuffed animals, a teddy bear that she’d inexplicably named Samuel. She was grinding on it, rocking back and forth, obviously stimulating herself. 

“Ha, see,” Connie said in a triumphant whisper, “she would have let you touch her. She’d love it.” She shook her head. “My kid, after all.”

Jon swallowed hard and forced himself to look away, even though his mind was jolted by the thought and his blood had started humming.

That night Connie left and did not return.

 

~

 

Summer had begun. It was Jon’s favorite time of the year, and Paloma loved it, too. She didn’t have school so he had unlimited time with his girl. Now she was out in the backyard, running and shrieking happily beneath the sprinkler. She was wearing the new bathing suit that he had bought for her. His love for Paloma had only grown over the past few months, but he moved slowly. He didn’t want to scare or overwhelm her.

Watching her play, her tiny body soaked, swimsuit sticking to her, was making him crazy. Making sure he could still hear her, he walked into the spare bedroom. He squeezed his hardening cock through his pants and stifled a moan. Biting his lip, he unzipped his jeans and pulled himself out. Closing his eyes, he thought of his baby, how much he wanted to peel the wet suit from her body, to put his mouth all over every precious inch of her, his hands. He’d be so loving, so sweet, coaxing good feelings out of her, hearing her sigh—she would like it, he knew—he realized through his red haze of lust that he couldn’t hear her anymore and he opened his eyes. 

She was standing there, in the doorway, watching him. Her eyes were big and wide, riveted, staring at his erect cock. She did not speak, only remained silent and watchful, interested. Curious. He’d thought to stop, but instead his hand kept moving, and he smiled a little to let her know that there was nothing to be scared of, even though he was terrified. He was certain that she would run away. But no. He was already close—and having his baby girl watching him stroke himself—it was unexpected but it was everything he wanted. He wanted her to see him like this, to be curious. Maybe he should explain, say _baby you make me feel so good, so good, I can show you. We can make each other feel good_. Maybe she’d want to touch him—Jon moaned and looked into her eyes as he came in a sudden hot burst. She still did not move.

 

Things were a little different after that. They had moved forward somehow, but towards what exactly, Jon did not know. There wasn’t a manual for this type of love. He didn’t consider himself a predator, or a pervert. He had known people like that, at the commune and other places throughout his life, and they didn’t belong anywhere near his baby. But Paloma seemed even more comfortable with him, and with herself. It was summer, after all, and they were home alone all day, in the sticky heat. Without any real prompting on his part, she had begun to wear less clothing, she’d given up on underwear when they were in the house and mostly ran around in her favorite tiny pink sundress. She was very welcoming to his physical affection and would eagerly fling herself into his arms, wrapping her spindly little legs and arms around him, pressing kisses against his cheek and hair, making his heart burn. He’d hold her close, press her to him, very aware that her legs were locked around his waist and she was bare beneath her dress and her skirt was riding up. He shifted, stifled a moan, allowing himself the indulgence of rocking against her just a bit. It was a wonderful day. 

 

That night, they were sitting on the couch. Jon had gotten up for a moment, to check on something in the kitchen. When he returned, he was greeted with the sight of Paloma sprawled out, her hand shoved down into her shorts. He could see it moving busily, her little face scrunched up in concentration. He stood, riveted, watching her for a second. Then she realized that she wasn’t alone, she looked up and saw him. Her hazel eyes widened and she sheepishly removed her hand. 

Jon smiled gently, and sat down beside her. He took her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing her tiny, curious fingers to let her know that she wasn’t in trouble. “What were you doing, baby?” he asked, wondering how much she knew of her own actions. 

“Tickling,” she replied, ducking her head. The innocent answer and her shy expression almost undid him. “Hmm,” he said, bringing his hands to the elastic waistband of her shorts. “Can I take these off of you?” he asked. “I want you to show me where you were tickling.”

“Ok,” she said with a nod, and his heart sang as he eased the shorts down and off of her legs, leaving her in her princess underwear. They were the ones that he had bought for her, but she didn’t know that he’d been stroking himself with them before he put them in her drawer. 

“Show me,” he urged, gently nudging open her thighs. Paloma slowly brought two of her fingers down and pressed them to her tiny button through the fabric. 

“Tickling feels good, doesn’t it?” he said. She nodded vigorously. “Feels very good,” she affirmed.

“Yes, baby, it’s supposed to,” Jon told her. He was achingly hard at the sight of her like this. Perhaps it was time to move forward as he’d been wanting to; Paloma seemed as though she would be receptive to it now. But he needed to make sure that she understood a few things, first. 

“Just make sure that it stays private, ok?” he said, stroking her leg. “You only tickle in the house, and you only show me. It’s something special just for us, princess.”

She nodded seriously. “Yes.”

Jon unzipped his pants and pushed them down. He wasn’t wearing any boxers, so his cock popped up eagerly. He took himself in hand, showing her. “I have a spot that likes being tickled, too,” he said. Paloma stared at it, wide-eyed, the way she had that day in the doorway. 

“Take off your underwear, baby, I want to see your special place.”

She obligingly slid them off, and he squeezed himself and bit back a moan at the sight of her smooth, hairless mound. She watched his hand slide along his shaft, and he asked her, “Do you know what this is?”

“A penis,” she said softly, blushing a little. Then she added, “It’s so big!”

He smiled. “Yes, it is big, sweetheart—it gets big because I think you’re so pretty. It makes me feel good.” He gave himself a few more strokes to show her, then released his cock and focused on Paloma. He imagined putting his mouth between her legs and seeking out her tiny pearl with his tongue, but he knew that would overwhelm her. Still, he had to touch her. “Don’t be scared, baby,” he whispered. “I’m gonna tickle you with my finger and make you feel nice, ok?” _Hell is where you belong, Jon_ , whispered a voice from deep inside of him.

She nodded. So sweet, he thought. Jon brought his finger down, watched it in almost slow motion, down against soft pink flesh that felt like silk, so new, so pure. Tiny clit. He was gentle, just light little circles. _Maybe so, but this is heaven_.

“Ooooh,” Paloma sighed, closing her eyes and pressing herself back against the cushions. “That feels good!” Jon’s heart was hammering in his chest, burning. Couldn’t fucking breathe. Always, he seemed to be a drowning man where she was concerned. He kept going. She made more soft sighs and he felt his swollen cock begin to leak. Had he always wanted this, or was it just her? _Just her, just her_ , said his mind. _It could never be anyone else. She was meant for you_. 

Paloma clamped her thighs tight around his hand and squeezed, rocking, rocking into his touch. Yes, she wanted him there. Mouth opened, gasping. _Came_.

He withdrew his hand from between her legs and wrapped it around himself. A few strokes was all it took and then his release splattered across her belly. Curious, she brought her hand down and touched it. He nearly died right there. 

He took her into the shower and rinsed her off. She hadn’t said anything, seemed a little dazed. “You ok, baby?” he asked, hating how unsure his voice sounded. He wanted her to like it, and he knew that she had…though she wasn’t old enough to understand why. She could orgasm, that much was obvious, but all she knew was that it felt good. He didn’t want to push her too fast. “Was that alright, what we did on the couch?”

She looked up at him through the dark, wet curtain of her hair. “Yes. It felt nice.”

“Good.” Relief flooded through him. “I like making you feel nice.” On a whim, he took down the detachable shower head and focused the spray between her legs. Paloma giggled and made those _oohing_ sounds that undid him. 

He tried to keep their tickle sessions to a minimum. He didn’t want her to become addicted to masturbation, so he made sure that she knew this was something special between them. His first impulse towards her was not a sexual one, it was a loving and protective one…perhaps a bit obsessive, if he was being honest, but he chalked that up to having purpose in his life for the first time. He took care of her, sewed himself into her world so tightly, made sure that she knew he would never leave her the way everyone else had. That was why he had been brought here, it was his destiny. His love was simply deeper than others, and so he expressed it more physically than most fathers. He was her father, now, and yet somehow he felt like he always had been. Sometimes he stared into her face and wondered what the nameless man who sired her had looked like, if he had the same hazel eyes. A surge of jealously would overcome him and he’d feel such hatred that it felt like claws in his spine. Then the other voice, calm, reminding him, _No, she’s always been yours._

Shortly after Paloma turned seven, she called him Daddy for the first time. It was the fourth of July. She was watching the fireworks from the back yard. In his arms, where she belonged. She smiled lovingly up at him, reached out her hand and ran her fingers through his hair, then over his stubble. 

“I love you, Paloma,” he whispered in a choked voice. He did. It was a love so strong that it sliced through him. He loved everything she was and everything she would be. Because he had been sent to her. “I’ll always take care of you. You and me will be together forever.”

She looked at him with her deep, serious eyes, her old soul looking into his, there in the humid night with colors exploding through the sky. Her fingers brushed his cheek, delicate, like tiny wings. 

“I love you, Daddy,” she whispered, and the earth shifted beneath his feet and his heart soared and he held her more tightly.


	2. Chapter 2

It was late summer, and Jon’s mind had begun spinning too quickly. Paloma was his only gravity and yet she was the origin point of his sickness. No, something said—it started much earlier. Insidious rustling in the undergrowth of his memory, the dim places where deadly nightshades grew. Poison bubbling up out of the ether. Voices, his and not-his. The days were going to be getting shorter and colder, soon. Illinois was one of those places with defined, inevitable seasons, which both intrigued and unsettled him. He could feel it in the air, see it in the way the sunlight crept across the floor in late afternoon. If he stared long enough at that rectangular shard of light, he fell into a trance where there was no delineated time—just a swirling eternity, young old back forth—the past and future all beside him and around him in a haze of pale golden color. 

He broke out of one such trance on a Tuesday afternoon to see Paloma kneeling in another beam in a different part of the floor. It surrounded her like a halo and brought out tones of red in her dark hair. The light caught the tiny sparkles on her bathing suit, and she glittered with every movement, every breath. She was crouched, peering out the glass sliding door into the backyard. Her chest heaved in a sigh, almost a resigned sound, and Jon knew that she was thinking of seasons, too.

“Sweetheart, soon it’s going to be too cold to wear your bathing suit,” he told her.

“I know,” she said, another sigh coating the words, making her seem older. “But just one more day, please?”

“Of course. One more day,” he agreed, pouring her a glass of juice. He focused intently on the task, trying to get his hands to steady, as they were inexplicably shaking. 

They often spent their afternoons doing artwork together; Jon got out his sketchbook and Paloma had her crayons and markers and the drawing pad he’d bought for her. She had an eye for color, he noticed, as she worked on a picture of a large and detailed butterfly. Then they read. His little girl was developing into a good reader, she could sound out words and had a good vocabulary. Rhyming helped her to learn, and they had read all of Dr. Seuss’ books and were now reading _Madeline_ , which she loved. He found it soothing, hearing her soft voice catching on certain syllables. Jon had made her some flash cards to practice with. He was a good teacher, he thought. _Yes, and you are teaching her so many things. Words…hm, how about clitoris, and cum, and cock…how about it…_

Soon the book was finished and closed. He pulled off his shirt and stripped down to his boxers. Paloma watched him with knowing eyes, she had learned that this meant they were going to have their special time together. “Go put your books back on the shelf,” he told her, and she did so, gathering them up into a stack and carrying them back to her room.

Jon leaned back against the couch, waiting, his erection tenting the front of his shorts. Paloma wandered back into the living room, still in her bathing suit. She practically lived in the thing, it was getting threadbare and he would have to buy her a new one next year. He was getting so used to always seeing her bare skin, another reason the winter was going to be difficult.

“Come here, baby,” he said, motioning her over. She climbed up beside him and he lifted and positioned her so that she was straddling him. He smiled encouragingly and began to rock his hips against her, her crotch pressing on his cock. “Rub your special spot on mine,” he instructed, his hands on her hips, moving her. She was starting to like the friction because she was moving more quickly. 

“Mmmm, feels so nice,” she said, and he arched against her harder, wishing more than anything that he could feel her bare skin against his. But that would be a step too far, something she was not ready for…and he was not certain that he had the self control for it. “Just like you do with Samuel,” he explained. Jon had told her that he knew about her teddy bear and the way she liked to play with him, had told her that was just fine but sometimes Samuel needed a break and she could do the same thing with him. _What does it matter? She’s going to grind on something, might as well be you_. 

He was tired of the back and forth, the protesting chatter in his head. He wanted silence and sensation. He wanted Paloma and him to be the only two people in the world, loving and holding each other with no words, no rules, no constraints. “Love you so much,” he whispered as she kept rocking, having found a pattern and rhythm that felt good to her, stimulating herself on his erection. He was learning her signs and signals, knew that she was getting close. She still didn’t understand exactly what an orgasm was, but she explained that she got really good, big feelings, like fireworks. She made a noise and clamped her legs around him, starting to shake. Her innocent body trembling in climax always wrecked him, and he gripped her hard and came, pressing her to him so that she could feel his release. Her breathing returned to normal and she shifted on him. She looked down between her legs, at the damp patch forming at the front of his boxers. She giggled. “You’re all wet.’’

“I am. Because you made me feel so nice.”

“I gave you fireworks?”

“Yes, baby, you gave me fireworks.”

It was evening, now. The sun had set during their game, and there was no light on the floor to worry about, anymore. 

 

 

There came a snagging feeling, like a fish hook in Jon’s chest every time he thought about Paloma returning to school in a few weeks. It made him restless, and restlessness was a dangerous thing for him, a coiled snake. Eventually someone would start asking questions, and once they realized that Connie was gone, his baby could be taken away from him. And that was unacceptable. He was her father. Perhaps not by blood, but in the ways that it mattered. Jon calmed himself with the reminder that he had means—and options. There were other places to go, some with seasons, some without. The world was divided in such ways, that was the law of the sun.

Whenever he got restless like this, he was drawn to the woods, and so one day he decided to take Paloma on a hike in a secluded area about an hour outside the city. Once they were alone beneath the trees he was calmer, felt safer. She seemed to like it, too—his girl was curious of and delighted by the natural world. She wanted to know the names of every tree and flower they spotted. The earthy smell, damp forest, mushrooms and lichens and crawling things—this was home for Jon, it was where he wanted to live and hide, to disappear with his child love and let the branches close around them until there was no outside, no houses and cities, where the sunlight fell differently. _Just because you can, does not mean you should_. Random voices and phrases kept washing up from the bottom of his mind like flotsam. He could sometimes recognize the voice, other times not. 

Paloma had been trekking obediently along beside him, but then she stopped. Her face was scrunched up in discomfort and she was grabbing the front of her shorts.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?” he asked, and she nodded vigorously, almost in tears.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t want to make you mad,” she whispered. It struck Jon as a strange thing to say.

“Why would that make me mad, sweetheart?” he asked, kneeling down beside her.

“Mommy always says I have to hold it until we get back home,” she wailed, tears finally spilling down her cheeks. “She says it’s my fault cause I’m supposed to go before we leave.”

Anger pulsed behind his eyes, bright-red, and he briefly imagined strangling Connie. “Your mommy is not here anymore, Paloma,” he said firmly. “I am. And you don’t have to be afraid to tell me anything, alright?”

She nodded again, calming, and Jon unbuttoned her shorts and slid them down her legs and off, along with her underwear. He tried to focus on her grass-stained knees, but his gaze was drawn upward, to the place that was his salvation and his doom. 

“You can go,” he said. 

“Here?” she asked, looking around, dumbfounded. “There’s no toilet.”

He tried not to laugh. “Sweetie, sometimes there is no toilet. And a very long time ago, there were no toilets at all. People just had to go on the ground.”

Paloma looked adorably conflicted. A bird cawed in the distance. And then Jon had a strange impulse. Allowing himself to fall under the pull of her bare skin, he reached out and touched her, rubbing his fingers gently through her soft petal folds. She reminded him of a tiny flower in early spring, a bud just beginning to bloom. She twitched, the stimulation jarring her a bit. 

“Daddy…” she whimpered. “Why…” She wondered why he was doing this to her, he knew, because he had expressly told her that it was only something that they did in the house. Truly, he was wondering the same thing. But it was already happening. 

“It’s ok, baby,” he soothed. “I’m helping you. Just relax.” He continued to stroke her, working the pad of his finger in tiny circles where he knew felt good for her, and soon she was breathing harder, trembling. Then—“Daddy, I need to—” and a hot gush of urine flooded out of her.

“Good girl,” he whispered, while she finished. She was startled, embarrassed. Shy. He cleaned her up with the wipes that he carried in his backpack, then got her dressed again. 

“You did such a good job, Paloma,” he praised her. “It’s ok to do that sometimes.” Even as he said it, Jon was thoroughly disturbed by the experience, namely how arousing it had been for him, and he was staunchly trying to ignore the aching tent in his pants. What had prompted such behavior? He did not know. Yet it continued to reverberate in his mind, long after they had returned home.

 

 

Then the next day, after drawing and flash cards, they looked at some books on animals. Lately, Paloma was fascinated by reptiles. Jon told her about the giant komodo dragons, iguanas, and dinosaurs. She listened. She learned. That was when he truly realized how open her young mind was, how eagerly she absorbed everything he told her. 

_She doesn’t need to go back to school_ , came that other voice. _You didn’t go to school, and you turned out fine. You can teach her. You can teach her everything. You’re all she needs_.

It was true, Jon had not attended school. Growing up in the commune, he had been taught by the Mothers. He had three who were always present: Kat, Raven, and Uma. They were all different sizes and ages, different hair color, different skin tone, but they all called themselves his mother. But they were mothers to everyone—there were so many children running around that any notion of biology was shrugged off. It wasn’t supposed to matter who they were genetically descended from, the Mothers were the Mothers and he had lots of brothers and sisters. He had learned just fine. Schools were mind-prisons, anyway.

Jon realized that he was staring at the light again, where it rested on a dingy square of linoleum. He hated this kitchen floor. He surfaced from out of his sun-soaked trance and noticed that Paloma was squirming uncomfortably in her seat. He raised his eyebrows.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she explained. This seemed odd. She knew that she could go any time she wanted, and usually did…except…

“Do you need help?” he asked, half-fearing what the answer would be. The memory of the woods flooded back to him and his blood rushed south, though his mind protested. 

She nodded and hopped down off of her chair, making a beeline for the bathroom. Jon followed after her, his hands beginning to shake again. He felt as though he were being pulled down a long tunnel in slow motion. It made him think of physics, space, the event horizon of a black hole, his body being dragged over some inescapable edge. He hesitated in the doorway for just a moment. It had gone incredibly quiet. His mind registered faint sound as if from far away; the squeaking of Paloma's shoes on the floor, the lifting of the toilet seat. Her pants were down around her ankles and she was sitting there, waiting. His feet were forward, moving, then the rest of his body followed, though a stray piece of Jon’s mind remained curiously detached, watching from a distance, somewhere up by the weird humming light fixture. It remained, observing the ugliness of the bathroom with its yellow and white tile, the chipping sink, the tall, long-haired man kneeling down by the toilet, reaching between the legs of the girl seated there. 

Even being only half-present, Jon could feel. He let sensation take over as he stroked her, unwittingly teaching the muscles inside of her more mature gymnastics than she should know. She was getting stimulation from the holding in and then letting go. Kegel muscles. Not something a child needed to know about.

_She already knows, she already knows_ , came the voice, in a macabre sing-song. _She always has_. Stop it! His world tipped and tilted harder, and his detached self hid by the warm buzz of the light and stared down with empty eyes. 

He pressed his other hand down underneath her lower belly, over where her swollen bladder was, and stroked more insistently, until she cried out and let go. It was a grotesque but real sort of arousal that he felt when the hot stream of urine flowed over his fingers, how he kept rubbing her even until she was finished. He was dizzy when he got off the floor. He washed his hands, watching the water as it ran over his skin, though now he was unable to feel it, to feel anything. His feet did not touch the floor, and yet he was suddenly standing in the kitchen, staring at the knives on the counter. He closed his eyes, imagining severing his fingers in one quick chopping motion. No more art, no more soft skin. No more sunlight or hell. The digits fell discarded to the floor. So much red. What sort of man was he? Now she couldn’t even take a piss without associating it with something sexual. How much would he take from her?

_But she wanted it. She asked for it. You merely showed her. You must be a good teacher_. Now the voice was so familiar—a real voice, a real person from somewhere in his memory. A man. Older. Hard to place. When—

He felt Paloma’s arms around his waist. “Daddy, I’m sorry! Was I bad?” She was panicked. Immediately, all the scattered parts of him collected themselves, and Jon realized that he had been crying, that his head was in his hands. She’d seen him, and assumed that she had done something to cause his despair. 

“Oh, no,” he said, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt and then scooping her up into his arms. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong.” He squeezed her tightly. “But you are a big girl, now, and you know how to go to the bathroom by yourself now. Can you do that from now on, without Daddy’s help?”

“Yes,” she answered solemnly, brushing a tear from his cheek. “I promise. I don’t want you to be sad.”

“I’m ok, baby.” Jon managed a smile. “You make me happy. I’m so proud of you.”

She smiled brightly and kissed him on the cheek. They went to sit on the couch and she got out her book about dinosaurs. His mind still felt strange, like an attic that had just been opened after a century. It was a spooky, off-kilter sensation, and so he turned on the TV for background noise, finding the drone of some sitcom re-run soothing. He listened to her sound out the names of the dinosaurs that she liked. _Tri-cer-o-tops. Ste-go-saur-us_. “What happened to them?” she asked, running her fingers over the drawings of the prehistoric beasts, the alien-looking plants, the world so long ago.

“They died,” he answered.

 

 

Sleep was illusive. In the middle of the night Jon was wide awake, being trampled by his thoughts. Then he heard the sound of tiny footsteps, the creak of the door. The bed dipped slightly and there she was, climbing in beside him. Her fingers found his hair, combing through the strands, then they slid down to his bare shoulders and torso. Silently, the touch moved lower still. She knew. She had learned. _Just because you can doesn’t mean you should_. What had he awakened in her? In himself?

Her hand dipped below the sheet. He was naked underneath, naked and quickly hardening; he had an instant and intense response to her touch. Her tiny fingers closed around him, innocent. She’d never touched him like this before. He’d been dreaming about it for so long, but it was a line that he’d never forced her to cross. But here she was, seeking him out with no real prompting on his part. 

“Does it feel nice?” she asked, her voice tentative and unsure. “Do you want me to tickle you so you feel better?” He hated that she was still worried about him. He was supposed to be taking care of her, not the other way around. 

“Yes,” he found himself admitting, the word a breathy groan, an admission of guilt and acceptance of it. He was drowning, again, letting go, here in her hands, bathed in the light of a half-moon through the window. He thought about the universe. About long-buried bones, time before time. 

She rubbed her thumb over the tip of his cock, and he twitched almost violently, like a marionette being jerked by the pull of a string. Paloma giggled. “You’re all wet,” she said. De ja vu? No, that was real. Days before. Time was moving so strangely ever since he’d discovered that beam of sunlight. He put his hands over hers, marveled at the size difference, how small and fragile her bones were. Up, down, faster, he encouraged the motions, and she obeyed—she, the eager prodigy, he, both the teacher and the unholy instrument.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has been reading, especially those who have left kudos or comments. This story is a little different from others I have written before and it is testing me a bit, due to the subject matter. Please let me know what you think!

Jon had quickly decided that they needed to get out of Illinois. The house was depressing, filled with decaying memory and that ever-present smell of old cigarette smoke that had woven itself into the very walls. He and Paloma deserved fresh air and a new start.They rented a modest-sized property by a lake in Minnesota, the area surrounded by dense clusters of pine trees. Here they settled into the next phase of their life. 

Jon found that his head was clearer now, some of the voices had pulled back and he could breathe again. He enjoyed the silence and stillness of where they were. Paloma was very agreeable about the move. He had explained to her that she would not be going back to school, at least for a little while, and she was fine with this. She’d been introverted anyway, so it was a natural arrangement. She was special, different from other children, too precocious and intelligent. Here Jon could nurture that intelligence and creativity without it being stifled. The natural scenery was perfect for an artist, and Jon found that he was incredibly productive again. The paintings were simply pouring out of him, in such vivid detail and color. He had sold several online and was developing a small following. Paloma was his greatest muse, though. Watching her grow, her talents unfolding, her keen, awake mind and the way it worked—he would never tire of it.

 

~

 

They had been at the lake house for nearly two years, years that had flown. Paloma was getting taller, her long arms and legs giving her a coltish look. Her face was slowly beginning to lose some of its baby roundness and her hair had grown long. She was more breathtaking than ever, and Jon longed to draw her, to paint her, but something would not let him risk it, so he kept her in paintings in his mind, where it was safer.

The winters were a bit harsher here, but eventually there was a thaw and now a pleasant spring was approaching. The ice on the lake melted and the air warmed, the first stirrings of new life showed on the earth. Jon had begun to notice changes in Paloma, too, not just her height—there were tiny bumps forming on her chest, the first touches of puberty. One day she was sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by her books. It was school time, and normally she didn’t have a hard time focusing, but now she kept stopping, fidgeting. Jon watched her bring a hand up to touch the hard, little bumps at the front of her shirt, frowning as she did so. 

“What’s going on, baby?” he asked, sitting down beside her.

“These…things,” she huffed in a frustrated tone, jabbing at her chest. “They’re weird and they hurt.”

Jon smiled. “Do you know what’s happening to you?”

Paloma sighed in that heavy, worldly way that made her seem so much older. “They’re my boobs, right?” She made a face.

“Correct.”

“Well, I’m not thrilled with them,” she decided plainly, and he threw his head back and laughed.

“It’s not funny, Daddy!” she chastised him.

“I know, sweetheart, it’s very serious,” Jon said, calming himself. “And I’m sorry you’re not thrilled with them right now, but give it some time. They still need to grow more.” He reached over and rested his fingers there, through her shirt.

“Can I see?” he asked, and Paloma nodded. Jon helped her to lift her top and pull it over her head. His mouth went dry as his eyes drank in the smooth, flat expanse of her torso, punctuated by tiny little swells beneath her pink nipples. His cock, which had been half hard ever since he’d seen her touching herself, now strained urgently against his jeans. His hands found her again, and he rubbed the buds between his fingers. She made one of those quiet, breathy exhales that let him know she liked it. Jon had learned to read her physical cues, he knew her body very well and was eager for these new developments and the potential there.

“Feel nice?”

She nodded and he kept touching her. “You’re just growing, baby,” he reassured. “It’s nothing to be scared of. Things are going to change a little bit. Your breasts will grow, you’ll keep getting taller.” He trailed his left hand down to cup her mound through her jeans. “And you might start to feel even more tingly and good down here. You might need touched more often, and that’s ok. You just tell me, and I’ll help you. And guess what else?”

“What?”

“Now that you’re growing up, we can do more things when we play together.”

“Really?” Paloma smiled.

“Really.”

“Can we play right now?” she asked, rocking against his hand.

“You know the rules,” Jon said, releasing her, with some difficulty. “School first. Later, I promise.”

“Ok,” Paloma relented. She dutifully got back to work, completing her division problems in the math book and then reading a chapter on photosynthesis, a word that she adored. After dinner, she went to rinse off her dish. Jon could not help himself, he crossed the room and came to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her in a hug, then trailing his hands down over her belly. His fingers found the snap on the front of her jeans and undid it, working the zipper down. He pressed his erection against her back and his hand disappeared down the front of her pants, hungrily seeking. His fingers slipped beneath the elastic waistband of Paloma's underwear and she arched back with a little gasp.

“Good?”

“Yes, Daddy,” her voice came in a swift breath. He skimmed through her folds, coaxing at her tiny button. It was becoming more and more responsive to his touch, would swell up eagerly when he played with her. Paloma rocked forward, her hips moving back and forth. He rubbed her until she was trembling.

“Come on,” he whispered, pulling his hand out of her underwear and picking her up. “Daddy’s got something special for you, baby girl.”

He carried her bridal-style into his bedroom and placed her on the bed, resting against the pillows. He undressed her, folding her clothes and setting them aside on a chair before removing his own shirt and pants. He stood a moment, struck by the sight of her, naked and so, so new. Like spring, a maiden goddess, fresh and virgin. Brush strokes crisscrossed his mind, colors and tones. He climbed up onto the bed so that he was lying beside her. He leaned close, bringing his lips to hers, a soft brush at first but then lingering, and she did not pull away. His baby’s sweet young lips sent a thrill through his blood. She sank into the kiss, her mouth relaxing, allowing him to tease her with a hint of his tongue. 

Paloma looked dazed when he pulled away, and Jon focused on pressing kisses to the column of her throat, feeling the pulse softly thudding beneath her skin. She was so warm, smelled so good, like soap and candy and something else that was completely unique to her. He allowed himself to explore her with his mouth, laving at her tiny nipples with his tongue, sucking gently at her blooming flesh. She made soft “ _aaah_ ” sounds, like the cooing of a dove and whispered “Daddy,” in a way that made him shake. He kissed down her belly and spread her legs open, taking a minute to simply admire the blossom of her sex. He’d only touched, never tasted. 

Jon’s voice was rough and thick when he spoke. “Baby, I’m gonna give you a special kiss. It’s going to feel really nice, just relax.”

Paloma nodded breathlessly. It seemed a slow-motion eternity, a moment that stretched on forever as he brought his head down between his baby girl’s thighs. She was still smooth and bare, but that would be changing soon. He reverently kissed her clit, and a small tremor wracked her young body. Jon lost himself in her, exploring with his tongue, swiping over her entrance, a place he hadn’t ventured before, but now he probed there ever so shallowly and she cried out. 

Her hands came around the back of his head, her fingers burying in his long hair; she rocked her hips up and pushed him closer, her legs beginning to tremble, her soft cries and moans getting louder until she was drunk on the sound. “Aaaah, aaaah, _aaaaah_ ,” she wailed as he pushed her over the edge, forcing an intense climax from her young body. _Big girl orgasm_. Jon paused a moment. He knew that he should stop and let her rest but he could not, she was too responsive and inviting and he was addicted, drunk on her. 

“One more, baby,” he whispered against Paloma's thigh, then resumed his ministrations on her over-stimulated pussy, sucking the swollen nub of her clit until she was thrashing. He raised his hands to rub at the buds on her chest while he worked her back up into another peak. He wondered how many she could have, how long he could keep her going.

_My baby, my baby, mine_ , chanted his brain. He’d never been this obsessively in love, his chest ached with it—he was making her feel so good. She needed it, would need it more and more now that she knew how wonderful it could feel. Jon ground his hips into the mattress, rocking to get some friction on his cock. He wanted to slot it between her thighs, feels his bare flesh against hers, but not yet. Her tremors subsided and he wasn’t able to hold back anymore. Straightening up, Jon took himself in hand. A few strokes were all he needed and then he was there; he positioned himself so that the tip was only inches from Paloma's flushed, wet skin and then he exploded in a hot burst, his seed shooting out and splashing onto her delicate folds, creating an obscene but beautiful picture, one that he would remember forever, how unspeakably erotic it was to see his cum there, right where it belonged.

 

 

Jon felt more alive during those days by the lake than he had in years. Dizzy with lust and love, almost constantly aroused by his baby girl and her changing body. Another side of him was emerging, one that both frightened and intrigued him. It was another self that had woken from some dormant slumber the minute that Connie had introduced him to Paloma, a self that was needy and hungry and utterly desperate to make the girl his in every way possible. At this other self's urging, he had grown bolder with her education. They sat together on the sofa one night; he had let her stay up a little later than normal to watch a movie. It was a more mature film than she had ever viewed with him before, and a fairly racy sex scene was beginning on the screen. Paloma watched with wide eyes, seeming riveted. Jon slid a hand up underneath her nightgown and pulled her panties to the side so that he could press two fingers against her. 

“What are they doing, Paloma?” he asked, nodding to the TV. She swallowed hard. “Sex,” she answered, after a moment. 

_So smart_. “That’s right. And what’s going to happen?”

“He… he puts his penis into her vagina…and then moves it in and out and then he…ejaculates,” she said, remembering the word he had taught her. They’d had a long talk that afternoon and Jon had explained the more technical aspects of intercourse.

“Yes, baby girl,” he affirmed, rubbing at her little button. “And what is your special spot here called, do you remember?”

“Clit,” she whispered.

_Very good_. “Yes, and your clit loves when Daddy touches it and kisses it, it swells up and gets excited, just like my cock.” Another word he’d taught her. He reached over beside him and picked up the pink egg-shaped vibrator that he’d bought. He turned it on to the lowest setting. Paloma looked at the thing with a curious expression. “What’s that?”

“It’s a special toy that I got for you. It’ll feel nice.” Pulling off her underwear, he spread her legs wider. Then he brushed the humming device against her clitoris. She jumped. Jon laughed. “It’s a little funny at first, but then it feels great, just relax.”

He pressed it against her again, rolling it in circles. He was sure to tease at her opening, wanting her to start getting stimulation there—he had been fantasizing lately about penetrating her with his fingers but he didn’t want to shock her with the sudden intrusion. Soon Paloma was whimpering and rocking up against the toy.

“Tell me what’s happening, sweetheart,” he urged. 

“I feel really good!”

Jon’s heart soared at the expression on her face, surprise and confusion shot through with growing delight. Her mouth was open and her cheeks were flushed pink. “Where, baby?”

“In…in my pussy.” She tested the word, it sounded filthy and delicious from her innocent lips. A bright flash of guilt and horror suddenly illuminated his addled mind. God, what was he turning her into? When would this metamorphosis be complete? _Hell is where you belong, Jon_.

_No, no_ , said the other self, _look at her, look at how she loves it, how she loves you, she's such a good girl for her daddy..._

“It’s tingling and…it’s getting more…” Paloma bucked harder and Jon ignored the war inside of his mind and increased the vibration, forcing her tiny body into climax. 

“Oh! _Oooh!_ ”

“What’s happening, what’s it called, tell me….” He needed to hear her say it, to know that she understood.

“ _Coming_! My pussy is coming, Daddy! It feels so… _aaah!_ ” She seized up and shook and he watched her humping at the vibrator until she finally slowed and stopped. After that she immediately got sleepy and he carried her in to bed.

Jon went back to the living room, a halo of lust suffusing his brain. That had gone better than he had expected; her education was proceeding nicely. Paloma was learning more about her own body, the things it could feel. The things he was _making_ her feel, he reminded himself, looking down at his hands. He felt suddenly fragmented, like a cracked mirror. “ _The potential is inherent. It needs only to be nurtured, understood_.”

He froze as the words slashed through his mind with knife-like precision. A memory. That voice again, those calm, lecturing tones so familiar. That man. A cold sweat broke over Jon’s skin. He had thought he was past this, but clearly not. A creepy, tilting feeling of un-reality found him again and for a moment he blinked out of the living room, out of the house by the lake, pulled far back into the past. He was a child again, at Hampstead Farm, staring down at his own small body. He was nude, for some reason. A larger adult hand wrapped around his penis, stroking it. A pressure started to build, a funny feeling, and soon it was standing up, all stiff. There were other people there, but he could not register their faces, they seemed to him to be sets of disembodied eyes, watching. The hand kept touching him. 

“ _Boys of any age can respond to stimulation and become erect_.” The hand was attached to a voice. _That_ voice. Jon didn’t like it, it was confusing—he was scared but the hand felt good even though he didn’t want it to and the pressure kept building and he needed something but he didn’t know _what_. He didn’t know he could feel this way. _Why?_ Suddenly his hips were moving and he was thrusting just because he needed to. He was like one of the dogs that roamed the farm and would sometimes hump at the air. Then an intense jolt of something moved through his swollen penis and made him cry out. “ _And as we see, he can orgasm, though he obviously does not ejaculate_.”

He had learned that word once, too.

 

Jon’s eyes were squeezed shut tightly and when he opened them he was crouched on the floor, his arms wrapped around himself. He felt disconnected and cold. He felt like human static. Dragging his body up off the ground, Jon staggered down the hall to his room. He tried to concentrate on the cool planks of the wooden floor beneath his feet. After he collapsed into bed, sleep did not bring relief. His dreams reached down into long-forgotten corners of his mind and stirred things again, things that should not be disturbed. The farm, playing out on the hill. The grass was long and filled with wildflowers. He was running after a small girl. She had dark hair and was wearing a white sundress that flapped as she moved. “Wait!” he called, struggling to catch up. 

“Can’t catch me!” she shrieked happily. And then she passed between the tall blades of grass and vanished. Gone. 

“Marie?” he called for her. “Marie?!”

_She couldn’t just be gone_.

He awoke in a panic, sucked in mouthfuls of air to try and calm down. Just a dream. _But_ , something protested, _but_ —

_No! Just a dream. There is no Marie_.

The door creaked open and Paloma appeared there like an angel. “Daddy?”

Jon tried not to let any distress show in his voice when he answered, “Yes, baby?”

“I had a bad dream.” She padded over and climbed up onto the bed. 

“Me, too,” Jon admitted, holding out his arms to her. She tucked herself in beside him. “But we’re safe now.”

“Yes, safe now,” she repeated, kissing him on the forehead. 

“Thank you, love. That feels nice,” he told her. Her sweet presence was chasing some of the shadows from his mind, bringing him back and centering him in the present. He closed his eyes. After a moment he felt her tiny hand slide into his boxers. Jon stirred immediately. 

“Baby,” he whispered, peering at her through the dim light, “whatcha doing?”

“Making you get big,” she answered plainly, as if it should be obvious. 

“Do you like it when I get big?” he wondered, feeling himself harden as he spoke. 

“It makes me tingly inside,” replied Paloma, ducking her head and seeming a bit shy. Jon pushed down his shorts so that she could have better access. This was certainly not the first time she’d crawled into bed with him and sought out his cock. He had never forced her to touch him, she’d done it all on her own. Perhaps he’d whetted her appetite that day several summers before when she’d walked in on him masturbating. He’d presented it to her with the hopes that it might stir something, he’d let himself rub against her and never even tried to conceal his erections…he shouldn’t be surprised that she wanted it. He’d hoped that she would. _Sicko_ , hissed his mind. _Making a six year old hungry for your cock_. Now hormones were beginning to flood her body, and she was getting ravenous. Had this all been part of his plan? He hadn’t even known that he had a plan. He’d never expected to be in love with a child. Before Paloma, he’d been attracted to adult women, he liked big juicy tits and round asses, had never known that he could become insanely aroused by an undeveloped body. It still did not make sense. 

And now she was lowering her head and pressing a kiss against the flushed, leaking tip of his prick. “Put it in your mouth, baby,” he begged, and she closed her lips over him. _Hell is where you belong_.

_There is no hell there is no Marie there is nothing only this this this_

The small, wet cavern of Paloma's mouth was the most incredible thing he’d ever felt. With no prompting, she began to suck and lick at it like a lollipop. She couldn’t fit much in, mostly just the tip, and it took all of Jon’s restraint not to thrust. He propped himself up on his elbows so that he could see his baby’s lips stretched around the head of him. After a few more licks and swirls from her tongue he could already feel an orgasm building. He wouldn’t spill into her mouth, not tonight, though the thought almost made him lose control right then and there. 

“Paloma, baby, stop,” he said gently. She pulled her mouth off of him with a wet popping sound. “Why? Don’t you like it?”

“I like it, angel, I love it, it feels too good.” He grabbed her hands and wrapped it around his aching cock, then placed his over it and helped her to pump him. _Why does it feel so good?_ “I’m gonna come, feel me come for you, baby.” Jon stiffened and released a flood of seed over their joined hands. Paloma examined the pearlescent fluid coating her fingers.

“This is what makes a baby?” she asked.

“Yes,” he breathed, his heart rate slowing. “That makes a baby during sex. It goes up inside,” he touched her lower belly, “and then meets the egg. They join together and then the baby starts to grow.”

Paloma nodded. “But I can’t have a baby yet, right?”

“Right. Because you haven’t gotten your period yet. Remember we talked about that?”

“I remember.”

“And you are still my baby,” he said, pulling her to him. “My very special girl.”

Yet Jon thought about it as they drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms, a dark impulse that was only growing. Once he got his fingers inside her, how long could he wait before his cock followed? He’d have to break her hymen with his fingers first, get her used to being penetrated by something so that when his dick went in she would hopefully feel more pleasure. He could be fucking her, filling her with his cum before she even started menstruating, not worrying about pregnancy.

But then… His hand crept lazily down around her and he rested his palm flat on her lower belly. The thought of putting a child in his baby girl sent a jolt of ungodly lust through him, striking to his very soul, and he was instantly hard against the small, soft curve of her ass. And then he was crying, tears running silently down his face, because Jon knew now for certain that he could not stop what he had begun with her, could not control the thing that had awoken in him, and he was filled with both dread and desire for what was still to come.


	4. Chapter 4

Jon began to prepare Paloma for what he wanted to do. He started this one night in his room, lying her down on the bed, gently spreading her slim legs open, taking a long look at her. His fingers itched to touch. He went slowly, getting her excited. He sucked on the emerging buds of her breasts, then slid down lower. He teased and rubbed at her little clit, watching it plump up. His breath caught in his throat and he had that crushing but wonderful tightness in his chest. Jon brought his mouth to her, kissing and sucking gently at her virgin pussy. He flicked his tongue into her tiny hole and she whimpered. Then the tip of his pinkie finger replaced his tongue as he pressed it gently inside of her. Little by little he worked it in. Paloma gasped but didn’t seem to be uncomfortable yet, just confused at the new sensation. She was a tight, perfect little vise and clutched around him instinctively. He pushed in further, until his whole pinkie had been swallowed up by her body. Her face was scrunched and she made little whimpering sounds.

“Doing ok, baby?” Jon asked. His voice sounded choked and rough. “Y-yes,” she responded. 

“It’s different at first, but it’s going to feel really good the more we do it, I promise.”

He began to move, pumping his finger slowly in and out, getting her used to the rhythm of fucking. Soon she was shifting and wriggling, and Jon resumed the ministrations of his mouth on her clit as he stroked. His cock throbbed and ached in his boxers, dribbling precum. Paloma started to shake and he stroked harder and faster, sucking on her clit. She gave a cry and rose up, arching her back as she had her first orgasm while being penetrated. He removed his finger and sat up, pulling his cock from his pants and pressing the thick length between her open legs, rubbing and grinding along her petal-soft folds. It was sweet torture to feel her like this, against him. Jon couldn’t wait for the day when he could thrust inside of her perfect little body, feel her receive him. She’d responded nicely to his finger, if he kept working with her then soon she’d be able to take one of his larger digits, and then he’d break that thin barrier inside of her. Just the thought of this made him shoot all over her belly.

 

 

They were well into Spring, now. It was getting warmer, and the air was laced with the scent of flowers. There were pink blossoms on the tree outside the window. For a little while, time had slowed and everything felt surreal and magical. Jon was enchanted by the renewal of the natural world around him, it roused a primal fire in his blood. He was so in love with Paloma, so drunk on her presence that he allowed them both to slack on work. His art and her schooling would be interrupted in favor of kissing and touching: she couldn’t concentrate and neither could he. She was getting used to a certain amount of stimulation and it was, it seemed, indeed becoming addictive for her.

He hadn’t wanted to do it this early, but everything in their relationship had become accelerated, and Jon began to show Paloma some pornography. He left a video up on the laptop where he knew that she would see it. Sure enough, his curious girl found it, and was watching with riveted eyes. His heart raced with delight as he saw her slide her hand into her pants and start touching herself. She was learning. Now, sometimes she spent hours lying on the couch engaged in marathon masturbation sessions rather than studying or playing, and Jon encouraged it, watching her and often joining in. He knew what it was like. He…remembered. 

When the doctor would bring him and Marie together, stripped down naked, his small cock worked to full hardness, the pleasure punching through him. While Jon hated the doctor’s soft, wrinkled hands, he couldn’t deny that it felt amazing. It wasn’t long before he was stroking himself every chance he got, rubbing against his bed and other objects, needing to thrust. It was almost pathological. And the doctor was pleased by this. He liked it, so he was _good_. Marie didn’t like it. She was _difficult_. Sometimes, she was even _bad_ , and needed to be punished. Who was that man, that doctor? Jon wanted to believe that it was all made up, that he was simply succumbing to an artist’s overactive imagination, or that he was perhaps psychotic—those were preferred alternatives to what he feared the truth may be.

 

One evening not long after this had begun, Jon fell asleep on the couch and had a strange dream. He was walking across a field, toward a large oak tree. A small figure was there beneath the branches, and as he drew closer he saw that it was Paloma. She was nude, squatting down on her knees. Jon could see that her normally flat tummy was distended, bulging out. Her face was strained. He got down on his knees in front of her, wondering what was going on. Pressing a hand to her belly, he heard her whimper. She seemed uncomfortable, though not in any real pain. Paloma opened her legs wider and he watched her press down. Jon ducked his head down and looked underneath her to see what was going on. 

To his utter astonishment, he could see something smooth and white starting to poke out of her opening. She moaned a little and pushed down again. More of the object began to emerge, her tiny body trying to force it out. It was an egg, he realized. Just a perfect, small, ivory-colored egg, the sort a hen would lay. It fell onto the ground, cushioned by the grass. 

Jon pressed his hand to Paloma’s swollen belly, feeling more eggs inside of her. She looked at him, her expression serious. “I have to push, Daddy,” she moaned, sweat slicking her dark hair to her forehead, her cheeks flushed. As a second egg began to slide out of her pussy, Jon woke with a start in the dim living room, Paloma tucked beside him. The strap of her new sundress was falling off of her shoulder, the top slipping down to expose part of a rosy nipple. 

He picked her up and carried her into his room. Normally, he would put her in her own bed, but Jon needed his baby close tonight. He was afraid that all of the flimsy boundaries that he had constructed in his mind were going to collapse. He was giving in to his urges too much, allowing sexual obsession to rule him. The more these ghosts from the past continued to rise, the stronger the impulse to lose himself in her. What had the dream meant? Something to do with Spring? Nature, new life…he went over the symbolism in his mind. _Farm. Trees. Chickens. Smooth while shells in small hands. Marie, Marie, Marie. Eggs were so very fragile._

Not wanting to think about any of that, Jon’s hand crept to Paloma’s flat stomach and rested there, and he imagined it swelling with a bulge, one that his seed had created. His baby girl wasn’t even fertile yet, but the thought of her tiny body stretched with new life made a jolt of lust shoot straight to his cock. These were very dangerous fantasies, he knew, but the part of Jon that fought against his desires was getting weaker every day. He knew that he should let her rest, but he needed the peace that only she could give him, and before he knew it, he had his mouth between her legs and was ravenously tonguing her little pussy. Paloma shifted and stirred, but still didn’t wake. Jon was glad. He didn’t want her to see the desperation in his eyes.

 

 

The next day was the first of May. It was sunny and very warm, so Paloma was playing outside. He was glad that she wasn’t cooped up indoors, but when Jon went looking for her, he found her straddling a fallen tree branch, rocking on it. He almost laughed, but the laugh caught in his throat and the earth tilted and then he was back at Hampstead Farm, young, watching as those familiar wrinkled hands delved between the legs of a nude, young, dark-haired girl. Marie didn’t like it when the doctor did that. The doctor would get angry when she whined. She was supposed to like it, after all. _See, Jon likes it!_ The hand would come for him, then, and he would be at its mercy. The field was thick with flowers, hazy with sunlight and the drone of bees. 

It was just a quick flash, but something about this memory filled him with dread. Jon grew somewhat frantic after, and he quickly crossed the yard and scooped Paloma up off the branch, sweeping her into his arms. She giggled and shrieked as he carried her back into the house.

“Caught you,” he said, giving her a quick peck on the lips. It was Paloma who leaned in again, who brought her soft mouth to his and let it linger there. It deepened. Jon loved kissing her, the sensual sweetness of the act, her plump pink lips, her innocent little tongue awakening to move against his, the soft sounds she made. The way her fingers wove their way into his hair. He let himself belong utterly to her, surrounded and safe. Even though it was the middle of the afternoon, Jon took them into the bedroom and stripped off his clothes. Wordlessly, Paloma followed suit. The sunlight through the window slid across her body, making her skin glow. He framed the sight in his mind, remembering every color and shadow. _My perfect girl_ , he thought. She was nirvana, in that moment.

What followed was a slow dance as Jon took her into his arms, marveling at how slim and tiny she was, how large his hands were against her torso as he rubbed his fingers over her nipples. He kissed all over her body, downwards. Paloma made a choked sound as he began to make love to her with his mouth. When her legs trembled and she started to squirm, he pulled back. “Want my finger, baby?” he asked her. She nodded bravely. 

“Yes.”

“I’m gonna use a bigger one this time. I’ll go slow. I love you, princess.”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

Heart burning, he leaned down, pressing gentle kisses to her little button while he used his longest middle finger to press inside of her. It was a snug, tight fit, and he worked it in slowly, pleasuring her as much as possible to ease the way. It worked, too; when he stimulated her clit she opened more and flutered around him. 

“Good girl,” he whispered against her, continuing to shallowly fuck her with his finger. In and out, pushing farther each time, until he found the barrier of her virginity. Could he do it? He had to, he had come this far, and so had she. He was going to die if he couldn’t fuck her soon, and this was a necessary step. He wanted her to feel only pleasure from his cock, but to do that, he needed to open her. Then he could better prepare her body to take him, to like the feeling of being penetrated. Back and forth, he watched, mesmerized by the sight of his long finger sinking into her tiny pussy. Instinctively, Paloma had begun to rock her hips. She always did like humping and grinding, so the fucking motions came naturally to her. Her breath was coming quicker and her skin was flushed. Now was the moment. He flicked his tongue over her clit in rapid strokes and her body jerked.

She was close, and he sucked hard while he pulled back and then gave a fast, deep thrust with his finger. Everything went still. Paloma shrieked, her confused body orgasming at the moment he punctured her hymen. He’d wanted it this way, to distract her from the pain. The pain, though, was inevitable. Especially because, he reminded himself, she was a child, not even ten years old yet. Her body was not supposed to be feeling these pleasures or these pains. And he was a desperate and selfish man who had become obsessed and could no longer control himself. Whose sole desire was to make love to his surrogate daughter and to have her want him. 

“Shhh, baby,” he said. He withdrew his finger. There was blood, of course there was blood. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. She was trembling. “You did so good. The bad part is all over, I promise.”

“It hurt…but I liked the rest of it,” Paloma admitted.

“I’m sorry it hurt. Now it doesn’t have to hurt anymore. But you liked having it inside?”

“Yeah, sometimes it felt good, when you were moving it around. It stings, but…it’s ok.”

Jon was relieved. “I’m so glad, love,” he said. “I’m glad that you trust me. All I want is to make you happy.”

He got a washcloth and soaked it in warm water, then used it to wipe the blood from her. He gave her children’s Tylenol for the pain, cringing as he read the label. Cringing at the red stains on the sheets. And yet. It had been so erotic. _She took it so well, she loved it. She wants this, you know she’s hungry for it._

His head felt fuzzy. His skin was too tight. And his cock—god, it was still so hard; he hadn’t come yet and he’d gotten so aroused by violating Paloma's young body that he was aching. He took her into the shower, to relax her muscles; while they stood beneath the spray he stroked himself while she watched. Amazingly, her own hand snuck down between her legs and it she began to rub there. 

_See? She can’t get enough. That little pussy is starved_. No, she was just doing what she’d learned. He’d made her a slave to her own body, exciting desires that she wasn’t ready for.

_She was ready, she was ready, you just helped_ —Jon squeezed his eyes shut, tired of the battle, the warring of his fractured mind, his divided selves. And that was the moment that he began to surrender, to give up the fight. This was who he was, now, and this was what he wanted. He opened his eyes and saw her still staring at him, her hand moving faster. _Yes_ , this was what he wanted. And he would have it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Here's another chapter for you, I'm sorry I've been lagging in updates on many of my stories recently, it's been a crazy couple of weeks but hopefully I should be back on track now. Thank you again to everyone who has commented or left kudos, I really appreciate it. 
> 
> Now, let's continue on with this dark tale...

It was approaching the beginning of summer, and the air was growing hotter and thicker. Bees droned and hummed around the flowers, the leaves on the trees were lush and verdant, and sunlight glimmered off of the lake. One day, Jon and Paloma were out by the water’s edge. She was collecting tiny smooth stones, and he was staring off into the distance, lost in the slip and shimmer of the light across the small waves. His mind had been a hazy blur all day, like he was half-bathed in a dream, still. This was not a comfortable feeling for him, it was usually a warning, a portent of some shifting plate tectonics in his mind about to wreak havoc. Jon had hoped that some fresh air would help to clear his head, but something about the sun glinting off the water had the opposite effect. Numbness coated his body, a static buzz. He felt himself slipping away, tumbling backwards in time again, dragged under before he could find anything to hold onto. Jon briefly resisted and fought the current, but then gave up.

_Marie’s nude body was splayed out in the doctor’s ‘office’, which was one of the many rooms in a large old farmhouse with green shutters, and a porch that wrapped around. Inside, the floor was made of shiny, dark wood. Steps, leading up to the office, which was on the second floor. This was the place where Jon, Marie, and the doctor spent the most of their time. There was a long couch there, made from scratchy blue material, and it was on this that she was lain._

_The doctor’s wrinkled, blue-veined hand was at the back of Jon’s head, urging him downwards, to the place between Marie’s legs. It was different than his, that place, but prettier, Jon decided. Soft and pink. “Give her a special kiss.” Marie did not protest this time, but she didn’t look happy, either. She didn’t mind too much when Jon touched her, wouldn’t put up a fight like she did with the doctor. Jon didn’t really know what to do, what was expected of him in this situation, but the hand behind his head was so insistent. It kept him there for awhile, instructing him to kiss her and lick her, that she was going to **like** it. Those words were said almost like a threat. _

_The doctor was waiting for something to happen, wasn’t going to let them go until it did. The afternoon was getting on, and they were missing the best hours for outdoor play. The sooner Jon made something happen, the sooner that he and Marie could be outside, climbing trees and building forts down by the pond._

_Jon forgot how long he was there, his neck ached and his skin was flushed and his dick was pressing hard against his pants so much that it hurt. Finally, Marie started wiggling around and moving her hips and making noises, and then she wiggled a lot and made a loud sound like she was really surprised, and then they could finally go._

_Marie put her on her white sundress and did not say a word. Her face was blank, eyes staring at nothing. Her hands kept clenching and unclenching. She left, but the doctor called Jon over. A sighing voice. Next to the window. There was still no face, just hands with blue veins. “Marie is not behaving the way I’d hoped.” The voice was disappointed and annoyed, then brightening. “But you did very well, Jon.”_

_Jon wasn’t sure what he’d done, or why he and Marie had to do these things. It was all so confusing. His mouth felt numb. He walked down the stairs, very slowly. Light poured in through the window on the landing and made the wooden floor shine. The glare stung his eyes. He stumbled out of the house, across the porch, his feet making a hollow, thumping sound that seemed to be echoing in his skull. As soon as he began to make his way across the field, he found himself doubling over, retching, bile and the small remainders of his lunch spilling from his mouth. The strangest thing was, his stomach didn’t hurt and he didn’t feel sick. He didn’t feel anything._

 

Paloma’s voice was coming from a distance. Jon finally pulled free from the grip of the memory, and tried to reorient himself. Where? When? He felt dizzy, and there was an awful taste in the back of his throat. Focus. The water. Softly rippling waves. Paloma had taken off her sandals and waded in, to just above her ankles. 

“Daddy, the water’s not too cold,” she was saying. She turned her head to him, a breeze caught the long dark curls of her hair and tossed them. She was smiling, her sundress flapping around her knees. She looked innocent, and happy. Then Jon was once again blindsided by a quick but terrible vision that rose like leviathan from the depths of him, images of decomposition and rot, maggots burrowing. Paloma was tainted underneath, old and rotten fruit, the core of her beginning a slow and insidious decay beneath her pink and fragile little-girl skin. He’d ruined her, she just didn’t know it yet. Jon knew, even if he could not fight it. Now she was trusting, but one day, she would understand just what a monster truly existed in him. 

But then, mercifully, the color of the thought changed, turned itself over and showed another perspective: the innocence fled and Paloma was no longer merely a child but something else. His lover, his perfect counterpart, her skin aglow with otherworldly light. _She was a good girl_. He was doing the right thing. Wasn’t he? He’d been working his fingers into her almost every night, eagerly stretching her. Her tenth birthday would be coming up soon. He wanted her to be ready by then, wanted to finally be able to make love to her the way he wanted, to sheath his cock in her tiny body.

Jon let himself smile, though his mouth still felt strangely numb and his head was drenched in light from far-away, reflecting off of a wooden floor. The Other Self quickly pushed all of the terrible memories and images of dead things away and made his mind clear and strong again. He strode over to Paloma, lifted her and spun her, sending droplets of water flying from her bare feet. She laughed, putting her arms around his neck. She leaned close, her mouth a breath away from his.

“Kisses?” she whispered.

He pulled back a bit, though with reluctance. “Not outside.”

Paloma pouted. “Boo.”

“Hey, shhh, you’ll get plenty of kisses later,” he promised, joy lightening his heart at her desire for him. “But you’ve gotta help me make dinner first, ok?”

“Ok,” she answered. Jon set her down and took hold of her hands, then looked warily down the beach. He knew that someone had moved into the next vacant lot not too long before, and though he and Paloma were still fairly isolated, now they did have a neighbor, and this unsettled him. 

They headed back to the house. Jon and Paloma had calmed somewhat after the spring fever that had seized them, and now they could focus on other things. They were drawing and reading together again, and, with a few exceptions, restricted their activities to later on in the evening after the sun had gone down. Paloma still studied throughout the day; though her schooling was more lax in the summer, it was important that she keep learning. There was enough to do to keep them both busy, Jon had planted a few gardens in the back yard, and Paloma, ever-curious about the natural world, was eager to help him. They went on walks through the woods and he taught her to identify different animal tracks, trees, and plant specimens. She liked mushrooms, and Jon showed her which ones were safe to eat and which should be avoided. His heart was lighter, then, and he so loved her presence, her intelligence and open mind, her wry little sense of humor. He cherished those good moments, because the days would also often bring those ghosts from his mind and drench him in guilt and self-hatred. Nights were another thing entirely. The Other Self felt safer without the sunlight. Some of the tension slipped away and his mind became languid under the pale glow of the moon. Then he and Paloma underwent a metamorphosis, becoming almost mythical lovers. She was so receptive to him, he allowed himself to embrace whatever this madness was without regret. They were hungry creatures together.

Her lips were so full, plump, berry-red. He kissed her later that night as promised, lingering mouth-kisses, and then everywhere else. He’d recently taught her to straddle his face, and she enjoyed that, rocking and swiveling against his lips as he plunged his tongue into her. After, she returned the favor, going directly for his cock and fastening her mouth around it. She was getting pretty good at it, but she still couldn’t take him very deep. Jon moaned and closed his eyes. And there, despite the safe cloak of the night, he found another memory, one that wrapped its fingers around his throat. 

_He was in his room, in the house where he lived with the Mothers. Kat was kneeling down in front of him, she was not wearing a shirt and her large, heavy breasts hung in front of his face. His underwear was off and his penis was hard. Kat smiled gently at him and brought his hand against her tanned skin, helping him to cup one of her globes. His heart pounded so hard that he was afraid she could hear it. Her skin was so silky and warm. It felt nice. And then she leaned down and closed her lips over him._

_A tremor shook his young body. Jon was simultaneously thrilled and startled. She sucked on him, bobbing her head up and down. This felt better than his hand, it was so wet and hot. Yet, there was a tight, uncomfortable feeling in the bottom of his stomach. As much as his cock was liking this, it felt wrong for Kat to be doing it. She’d never touched him there before, nobody had until he started seeing the doctor. Now, suddenly, his body was very interesting to the adults around him, and he wondered why._

_Raven appeared in the doorway, watching the scene with a strange look on her face. “I still don’t think it’s right,” she announced flatly._

_Kat took her mouth off of him and temporarily replaced it with her hand. “Dr. Diderot says it’s good for him. Says if we do it regularly he might even start jizzin’ soon.”_

_Raven shook her head almost violently. “He’s too young to be jizzin.’ It’s sick. He should be playing outside, not getting his cock sucked by his mother.”_

_A brief flicker of doubt, of conflict, went across Kat’s face, though she kept stroking him. “He likes it.”_

_“Doesn’t mean it’s right,” grumbled Raven, and Jon could clearly make out the disgust in her dark eyes. “I think that doctor is fucked in the head. His theories are pretty sick. This place is becoming a weird pedo cult.”_

_“We’ll discuss this later, Ray,” Kat said in a clipped tone, her eyes narrowing. Raven huffed and closed the door. His mother leaned down over him again._

 

These flashbacks weren’t stopping, Jon realized. In fact, they were getting stronger, beating against the sides of his brain. How had he lost so much of his life, blocked it out? What else wasn’t he remembering? He dreaded to know. He’d always been moving, never really stopping to think about the past. Something had triggered these memories, set them loose from whatever box they had been tightly locked away in. Jon didn’t want to look too closely at any of them, hoping that perhaps if he allowed them to flow through him they would be gone for good, like a nightmare slowly fading hours after waking. Yet as they emerged, they did not leave him, merely clung on more tightly, all small pieces dragging themselves together to form a gruesome tableau. 

Jon forced his racing heart to calm by locking his eyes on Paloma, trying to chase the thought of Kat’s mouth from his mind and the sudden wave of nausea from his stomach. He was _here_ , he reminded himself, sucking in a breath. In the house by the lake, with his beautiful baby girl, far from the Farm. He clutched at the blanket, watching her dark head moving, letting the pleasure ripple through him and heal him. Paloma had gotten more experimental lately, she used her tiny hands along with her mouth, one on his shaft and the other sneaking under to cup his balls. He hadn’t even taught her that, the beautiful creature had figured it out on her own. Pride surged through him. Jon arched his hips just a little, restraining himself from thrusting. He was getting very close, especially with the way she was gently tugging at his sac. It felt too good to tell her to stop, and his orgasm crashed though him, his seed erupting in a hot torrent, spilling into her sweet mouth. 

Paloma gagged in surprise, jumping back, drool and cum spilling down her chin. 

“Sorry, baby, I’m sorry!” Jon quickly pulled her to him and grabbed a tissue from the night table to wipe off her mouth. 

She gagged again and spit the rest into the tissue. “It’s ok,” she said, after taking a moment to catch her breath. “I thought that might happen. I never tasted it before.”

“Did you like it?” he wondered, despising himself for hoping that she did. 

“It tastes funny. Salty.” She thought for a moment. “I don’t _hate_ it. It’s just gooey and slippery.”

Jon ran his fingers over her lips. He prayed that she was telling him the truth. “Well, good…I’m glad you don’t hate it. And I think you taste wonderful.”

“Thanks.” She curled up against him, laying herself across his stomach, his cock trapped beneath her mound. He stroked a hand gently over her back, rubbing in soothing circles. They remained there together quietly for a few minutes, just breathing.

“You’re not like other daddies, right?” Paloma asked, breaking the spell of stillness. 

Jon froze. “What do you mean?”

Her voice was matter of fact. “The things we do. Other daddies don’t do that with their kids.”

He swallowed hard. “No…not most of them,” he admitted. “But some do.” _Child molesters. Pedophiles. The ones who made him like this, a haunted shell of a man. Yes, some do. I’m nothing like them!_ His chest felt heavy and cold. “Why? Do you not like the things we do?” Jon forced himself to ask the question, even though it felt like a knife twisting in his gut. If she didn’t want him anymore, he’d die. Without question. Fear gripped him with skeletal fingers, cutting off his air.

“No, I like it,” Paloma assured, running her fingers over his chest. “It feels good. And I love you. I don’t want you to be sad. I like making you happy.”

_The relief_. Jon was drowsy with it. “Oh, baby,” he said, reaching down to card his fingers through her hair. “I love you, too. That’s why I like touching you, it’s a way I show my love by making you feel good. People do this for each other, just not always daddies and their little girls. Lots of times you wait to be more grown-up to do it, that’s why we can’t tell anyone. Because they won’t understand how much we love each other, ok?”

“I know,” Paloma whispered against his skin. “I’ll never tell anyone.” She had begun to rock slowly against him and he was getting hard again.

_I’m nothing like them_ , Jon repeated to himself, over and over, until he believed it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has been difficult for me to write, and so many times I have debated whether to finish it or not. I still feel, as I said in the beginning, that it wants to be written, and so I am continuing it to the end, which we already know will not be happy. It goes without saying that I absolutely do not condone any of this behavior in real life. But it is a work of fiction, and the job of good fiction is to make people think. My undergrad degree is in Sociology, and I have always had a need to understand why people behave the way that they do. There is an underlying cause to all disease, and we live in a diseased society. The sickness is all around, it exists side by side with us, but we refuse to look at it directly because it makes us uncomfortable. Yet it is only through really taking a long, hard look into the abyss and trying to ask the difficult questions that we can ever hope to have answers, and in turn, the chance to maybe find a remedy for the sickness. Thank you for reading, and thank you for being patient. Please let me know what you think.

Jon had taken Paloma on a small outing, a drive into town. He needed to meet with the owner of a local gallery who was displaying some of his work. Normally, much of his art was sold online, but this was a good opportunity; the nearby arts community was thriving at the moment and so he needed to take advantage. The owner, Beverly, was maybe a few years older than Jon, with creamy skin and a tumble of pale blonde hair. She was clearly interested in him, very flirtatious, touching his arm and batting her eyelashes, telling him how much she loved his work. 

She was attractive to Jon on a superficial level, he viewed her with an almost lazy artistic detachment, taking in all of her color and shape without really feeling anything. Once upon a time, he would have flirted back. Now, he barely spared a glance at any woman. His heart belonged to his baby girl. Paloma seemed to be enjoying their day out, at least at first. She liked peering in all the different shop windows, tasting samples of fudge at the bakery, admiring a tiny glass dragon. She clung tightly to his hand the whole time, though. Now, as they stood in the gallery, she was stony and silent, Jon noticed, she glared at the blonde owner with disdain, her tiny fingers gripping his own more firmly. When Beverly smiled at her and told her how pretty she was, Paloma managed a polite but chilly “thank you.”

Suppressing a laugh, Jon quickly finished the conversation and told Beverly that he would be in touch. She handed him a card and wrote her personal number down, giving him a knowing, hopeful smile. Paloma glowered harder and pulled him towards the door. “What was that about?” he asked as they began the drive home. Paloma’s arms were folded and her lips were set in a pouty line. Jon knew exactly the reason for her behavior: she was jealous. And he loved it. Because it showed that she loved him and wanted him all to herself. “What’s with the face?”

She huffed out a sigh, then said, “I just didn’t like that lady.”

“Ah. Why not?”

Paloma didn’t say anything for a moment, instead looking out the window at the passing scenery. Jon took the opportunity to enjoy the sunlight shining onto her hair. The wavy dark tresses were getting long, and he enjoyed weaving them into a braid every morning. She was growing up, he could see that. Her birthday was the next day, she would be ten years old. Heat burned low in him at what that meant. Paloma turned back to him. “Did you think she was pretty?”

Jon smiled, giving a shrug. “She was alright. But I think that _you_ are beautiful.”

Her face softened a little. “You always say that.”

“I say it because it’s true. You are the most beautiful girl in the world.”

“I’m different,” she said quietly. 

“What do you mean?” Jon asked. 

Paloma looked down at her hands. “I’m not like other girls, I don’t think. I don’t know what I am. I’m in between. Inside, I feel really old, like I’m all grown up. But I’m also still really little, and it doesn’t make sense. Sometimes I want to cry.” She picked at a hangnail.

It made sense, it made terrible sense to Jon. Of course she would feel different, he’d isolated her and turned her into his lover long before she should ever have been exposed to such things. No matter what the doctor had taught him. _Just because you can does not mean you should_. He’d forced her body to grow up so quickly, but had robbed her of her childhood. Despite his efforts lately to keep their ‘activities’ compartmentalized and give her as normal a life as possible, the fact remained that it was all a lie. She _was_ different. Normal nine year olds didn’t have oral sex or get fingered by their fathers. The ones who did were victims, and though Jon hated to think of Paloma in that way, she was: she was the victim and he was the perpetrator. Those were facts, facts that he worked steadily to push aside and ignore, because they inconvenienced him. 

Jon’s Other Self had given him a new, more comforting narrative, one in which his girl was a willing participant, even an instigator, who enjoyed their physical relationship as much as he did. This was what he had chosen to believe, but there were still those moments when the truth attempted to punch through weak spots in his walls and ambush him. 

“Paloma,” he said carefully, “you are perfect to me. And that’s all you need to know.”

 

Back home, Jon tried to work, but the noises in his head were too loud, there was an ever-present background static, an electrical hum and crackle. It curled around his ears, settled inside his skull. His fingers twitched around the charcoal pencil and the movements of his hand grew unsteady. All he could think about was Paloma, sitting a few feet away, twirling a strand of hair around her tiny, slim finger as she read a book. It was her innocence that struck him as always, the reality of her child-self at odds with how he knew her, as an ageless and sensual being created solely for him. Different, indeed. A very different creature. Jon had always hesitated in incorporating her into any of his art, though he wanted to. Now the desire overpowered all reluctance and the pencil flew over the page, shapes and lines and shadow. He was barely even aware of what he was doing, the motion was almost automatic. In his mind, all he could see was the waving of cattails, the tall, dense grass of the field near the commune, scatterings of wildflowers. Places where he’d liked to hide. The sun had been so hot overhead that day…that day…

Jon blinked and the page was covered and his dick was pressing against his pants. Confusion overtook him while he tried to remember where he was. His sweaty fingers were clutching the pencil so tightly that it nearly broke. He looked at the drawing, eye widening at the explicit image of a young girl being fully penetrated by a much larger adult man. The juxtaposition of size was jarring, and he’d embellished and exaggerated it even further; the girl’s stomach bulged visibly with the giant intrusion, almost as if she were pregnant. The child lay there, rag-doll helpless. Neither the man nor the girl’s faces were visible, but her hair was dark. Both horrified and aroused by his creation, Jon quickly snapped the sketchbook closed.

 

~

 

On Paloma’s birthday it was rainy and overcast, unusually chilly for summer. Jon could feel a kind of electricity creeping over his skin. He hadn’t slept well the night before, tossing restlessly for hours before finally getting up and making some coffee, watching the rain drip off the tree leaves. There was something changing, he knew. He also felt oddly exposed, perhaps it was because he had taken Paloma into town the day before, or due to the fact that they had a new neighbor. She was a quiet woman named Dana, a writer with short-cropped lavender hair. They’d spoken a few times, and she seemed pleasant and non-threatening enough. She kept to herself and did not pry or try to be overly friendly, and Jon was fine with this. Still, her proximity to them worried him. He was very careful. Outside of the house, he and Paloma appeared to be like any normal father and daughter, but he had an irrational fear that if anyone were to look too close they would see, they would know what he was, and his baby would be ripped from him. Just the thought of being without her made his chest feel as though it were caving in. And now the drawing…he debated tearing it up and burning it, but he could not. It was just art, pencil lines on a page. And yet to him it was so much more than that, it was evidence of his diseased, perverted desires. He wanted to deny how hard it made him to see that little tummy bulging out with the invasion of that monstrous cock, but he could not. Especially not today.

The hours passed in a blur. Paloma had cupcakes, chocolate with vanilla icing and sprinkles. They cuddled chastely on the couch and watched a few of her favorite movies and then she opened her presents: several books, a drawing pad and new set of colored pencils, a dragon charm for her bracelet. Jon drank a glass of wine and half-wondered if he should give Paloma a little to relax her. No, that would be wrong, he decided. He couldn’t have her impaired. What he was going to do was unforgivable enough. He paused in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room and stood with the now-empty wine glass in his hand while he observed Paloma sitting quietly on the couch, thumbing through one of her new books. It was a kid’s fantasy novel about wizards and dragons, the sort of thing that she loved. This was, Jon realized, the last time he would see her in this uncorrupted state. He put the glass down and closed his eyes for a moment. _Tall grass. Thick enough to hide in. “Do you ever want to run away?”_

His eyes blinked back open very quickly, the grass disappeared, and Jon moved towards Paloma. “Come here, baby,” he said, holding out his hand.

 

~

 

She had only cried a little. Then went very still. He didn’t stop when she asked him to. She told him not to do it, that it hurt. And he told her to be a good girl. She closed her eyes. And thought about sunny days and dragons. Flying through the sky, big wings outstretched. And didn’t feel anything at all.

Paloma always tried to be good for Daddy Jon. He took care of her and bought her things and made food for her, real food, not McDonalds all the time. He didn’t always leave her all alone the way her Mommy had. When he touched her, it was ok. It was different than the others from before, the blurs of faces and hands and cigarette smell when Mommy let her boyfriends play with her. Paloma felt safer with Jon than she had with anyone else. He loved her and he had never hurt her. Until now. Now she curled up in his big bed and sucked on her thumb, something that she had not done in a long time. She was a big girl now, and big girls didn’t suck their thumbs. But she felt very small and blank, like a tiny, fragile animal curling into a shell to protect its soft body.

~

Jon ran a bath and lifted her up, she was silent and heavy, like a stone. Paloma’s eyes were open, but she had barely spoken two words since… He needed to clean the blood from between her legs, and hopefully the water would help soothe some of the pain. It had not gone the way he’d hoped. She was a child, and an adult penis was much larger than a finger. Broken hymen or not, her body was pushed beyond its limits to accommodate him. He should not have been so stupidly naïve to dream that she would magically open up and welcome him. She had cried. Tried to be brave, but the moment he started penetrating her she tried to squirm away, telling him that it hurt, to _please stop, please_ … But the terrible roaring in his head was too strong, forcing him onward with a monstrous need and hunger, stronger than anything he’d ever felt. Why didn’t she like it? Why did she look up at him like he was suddenly a monster, tears in her hazel eyes? She’d wanted this, always wanted it. And now suddenly she’d changed her mind. It wasn’t fair. “Be a good girl,” he found himself saying, over and over, gripping her legs. Now, she wouldn’t speak. She was being so _difficult_. This was supposed to be a good day.

She would learn, Jon told himself as he dressed her in a nightgown and tucked her against him, her body tense and turned away. He felt splintered and fractured beyond all recognition as he fell asleep. What greeted him there was tall grass. He was hiding with Marie. She had lost weight. There were dark circles under her eyes. She looked old. Their months with the doctor had aged her. “I’m going to run away,” she told him decidedly, her voice firm. “Do you ever want to run away?”

_Yes_ , he thought, but didn’t say anything.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she went on, shifting anxiously. “I’m not like you. I don’t like it.”

“You know I don’t like it either,” he said. “I wish it was different. But we have to. You can’t run away, where will you go? The doctor will just find you, and you’ll get into trouble, worse than before.”

“I don’t care,” she said, balling her hands into fists, her eyes aflame with wild determination. “I’m going to leave! It can’t be like this everywhere. I hate the doctor! I hate everyone here!”

“Even me?” Jon asked softly. Marie was quiet for a moment. The flies buzzed and a frog croaked in the nearby pond. The air was so heavy, like a storm was moving in. 

“No,” she whispered. “I don’t hate you. You could come with me.”

“Marie, I…” he knew that there would be no point. Leaving was a terrible plan. Already, a kind of fatalism had settled in his mind. He had accepted the farm and the doctor, the way it all was. No, he didn’t like it, but it was home, somehow. It was the only thing he knew. 

“You won’t. It’s ok.” Marie’s voice held a resignation too large for her slight frame. “But I’m going. And you better not tell on me.” Her dark eyes narrowed at him in warning, showing him that she was serious.

“I won’t tell,” he swore, locking his pinkie finger with hers. “You’re my friend. My best friend.”

 

Jon opened his eyes to the sight of another rainy day. Turning over in bed, he saw Paloma there, curled beneath the sheet. Something about the way she was lying there, combined with the dream still clinging to his mind, sent him spiraling into another memory. The day that they found Marie. 

_They said she drowned in the pond. But it didn’t make sense. Marie was a good swimmer, even better than him. Jon had stood with the Mothers and watched while the people came to take her away. She was all covered up, just a shape. A scream rattled at his ribs, threatening to burble out of his mouth._

He made it to the bathroom just in time, his stomach heaving violently. Jon was chilly, shaking and disoriented from this latest episode, which had barreled across his mind with the force of a Mack truck. He rested his head on the toilet seat, felt himself slipping away into that numb buzz, one that carried him away. “ _Let go, Jon, let go_.” The voice filled his head, hated and familiar. The doctor. “ _We’re always misunderstood in the beginning. Release the guilt and shame. Those are only the constructs of society, flimsy as paper. Leave it behind. It is the only way_.”

The only way. 

He’d come too far, now. They could not turn back. Soon, Paloma would realize that it was for the best. This was just a rocky start, an anomaly. She would come around and stop this silly resisting. After all, she was such a good girl.


End file.
